pink santander girls

a story about feeling

I am now somewhat settled in Santander, a small port city on the northern coast of Spain in Cantabria. There is a bay and a beach and the wine is plentiful and cheap. There are outdoor escalators to take people up hills. It is by far the cleanest city I have been to. There is rarely trash, pee, or poop on the ground. Rarely any obvious public displays of affection. Everything is neat and clean and proper in a way that feels so disciplined. Many things close on Sunday, the lord’s day. Every day, I am surrounded by the beauty of this city but am not moved toward that deep profound feeling, that guttural awe, that I used to get while in Mexico or during a romantic New York City autumnal day, but alas, it is special in its own way.

I am here as part of fluent’s praxis, an experimental three month school on art theory and knowledge production. The program is longer than my last summer school in Mexico but a bit more spacious, leaving time for independent studies and research. For my first free day, I took the time to create a movie list, which currently has about 100 entries.

Sometime over the last week, I decided I would like to make movies again. In fact, I think I decided this last summer, but there was a moment during this program which made this desire feel a bit more urgent, in fact, this urgency was sparked by feeling a bit of anti-desire from a guest filmmaker who has adopted the pedagogy of hierarchy and fragility. I was so utterly unmoved that it moved me… In my quest to write a philosophy around perverted design, well, film has been the people’s perverted medium of choice. Every technological innovation has been immediately leveraged for sex so when film making became more accessible due to the invention of the portable device, it opened opportunities for sex and revolution. Big claim but every film is about the erotic and sexuality and relatedly power in every level from the writing to the systems of labor to the final productions. Eros invades it all. In a way, these erotic formulations initially pushed me away from film when I was studying it in undergraduate years. It was hard to understand where the space for my voice was, how to collaborate when people were reproducing stereotypical sexual environments on set and screen, and what ideologies had become a part of my gaze training.

Film theorist Laura Mulvey's 1973 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” popularized the concept of the “male gaze” and became the obsessive phenomenon to track in film school. It became the obligatory citation in any feminist film criticism and individually, functioned by causing me a tremendous amount of stress. We never talked about the female gaze, if such a thing ever / even existed. In fact, during my flight to Spain, I decided to download Annie Rose Malmet’s “Girls, Gut, & Giallo,” podcast on the subject to listen to while in the air.

And it is not that I do not believe in the male gaze or the importance of critiquing the construction of gender through visual means which absolutely has the power to continue to reinforce and normalize beliefs, but rather I learned to be conscious of critique before I learned how to enjoy anything or figure out what moves me. I learned to accept theory as ultimate truth before evening learn what a critique even is or why it is or is not important or most importantly, how to take an artistic risk. Perhaps, I have not ever learned (from an institution) how to make art after all. I have learned anxiety, framing, and words.

I would like to be an artist that makes art.

& I would like to feel something in the process.

My new friend Sunny and I watched Pink Flamingos (1972) and Show Girls (1995) on our couch today. A movie marathon, only put on pause for a momentary stressful google situation to read up on fleas. Yes, there is a flea infestation in our group, but luckily / hopefully, not in our apartment. These movies made me feel something. The fear of fleas did too.

UPDATES (─‿‿─)

✿ I have a small lil artist feature and some writing about holes in this upcoming edition of Wussy Mag to be released Friday October 13. Pre-Order now to also experience the work of Buffy the Slut, Empress Wu & Cleo Ouyang, Gregg Araki, and other faves.

✿ While in Spain, I am hoping to take advantage of the ease of european travel to see more places and most importantly performances, events, festivals, workshops, museum shows, etc dealing with any of my favorite topics (kink, bdsm, fetish, eco-sexuality, porn, glory holes, other holes, and eco-sexuality).

✿ Lastly, just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who reads and shares my work and to those who are paid subscribers here. This substack has always appeared to be very wandery, so thanks for joining the ride. If you’d like to send a monetary thank you or buy me a coffee or glass a wine, you can venmo me @nettlehooks.